close eyed, hoping for a better life
by strangervision
Summary: Post-movie, Natasha goes to Russia and comes back, Clint sings with his guitar and makes a decision to make his feelings and their connection tangible.


**Okay, so you know, I totally wrote a proposal!Clintasha fic. I suck, ok? Don't worry, not much angst here. Also I have a lot of fluffy!Clintasha feelings, so yes. There's that. **

**Also I have this fic idea in mind. I've had it since I started writing fic. Now it just feels massive and like a monster. Like, it totally Hulked out in my head so I'm stalling with these simple, small pieces. I hope this appeases the people who like my writing...? **

**Other than that, characters not mine bla bla, hope I got it in character enough-ish, love you all wish I could make friends with all of you I am rambling ): Have fun with this! Also listen to The A Team, Ed Sheeran, for feelings. One day I will write a fic where Natasha sings (because Scarlett Johansson, you guys, she totally sings). Hope you like this!**

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**close-eyed, hoping for a better life**

He's singing. Natasha is a little amused, a tad perplexed at how comfortable he is with the tune, but she shrugs to herself as she goes to get her coffee. She's long known of his love for country music anyway, and what surprises her this time is his choice of genre. It's not country, not any of the top 40 hits she hears when Steve requests to be acquainted with modern culture, not the snazzy club beats she sometimes catches Thor puzzling over. It's a soft song that he strums, and she barely catches the lyrics but she hears him sing _it's too cold outside for angels to fly_ before she turns away with her coffee. If the lack of greeting is any indication, he's mulling over things and even if he knows she's there he doesn't quite want to lose his train of thought.

Besides, they're not people to gloss polish over a bump in the road and pretend the new sheen makes it non-existent. She sighs, a little from the caffeine she has in her system and a little from wistfulness.

Aside from salvaging the mission in Russia that she left incomplete before she came (which involved killing the few men that held her captive before they met anyone, then getting close to the old fogey's son for intel, before finally putting him away as well), Fury's pretty much stuck to his declaration that they've earned a little leave of absence. He hasn't contacted any of them in a month. Which brings her back to what's been happening, and how they've now here, just past that rough bump in the road and still resisting the gravitation to each other. He'd been upset, when she came back, that she left without telling him. And then he'd had Tony check up on her whereabouts for him (which he did, but very grudgingly and after a lot of moping on Clint's part: _Fine, I'll track down your ladylove and her damn spider hole. For all you know, it's just hibernation_) and then found out what her mission entailed: a lot of little black dresses and pandering, although when it came to it she hadn't needed to seduce the guy, just let him go the same way his father did. Still, he'd been frustrated, and if she lets herself be honest now, she'll grudgingly admit she can see how the mission would look from his perspective. She'd reacted badly, yelling the usual about how she could protect herself and this was her life, as well as how she'd been trained for this, before throwing him a few swear words in Russian and stalking off.

They're in his safe house, and she doesn't leave because she doesn't want to, but all he's been doing is singing on his old guitar, this same song particularly, interspersed in the middle of others she recognizes. There's _Iris_ by Goo Goo Dolls, and then _Perfect_ by Pink, and a few other classic country songs. She's jerked out of her train of thought when he switches song choice, singing _If I Die Young_ and then she stalks out, still holding onto her coffee, one arm wrapped beneath her breasts as if to hold herself together.

"A little old to be singing that, hm?" She comments quietly, not quite dry; yet not quite tender either, as she levels his gaze with her own.

He meets her look and holds it for a while, before laying the guitar to the side and shifting. His elbows are on his knees, and his hands are clasped together, resting lightly on his lips. Then he lifts his head and murmurs his apology. He doesn't give a reason why he was upset because she knows why, and it's going to sound like excuses anyway, vacant like the stare she's giving him.

She nods, then grants him an audible sigh as she sets the mug down and pads over to him, arms by her sides. She takes his hands in her own and commits to memory how his fingertips feel against her own.

"I'm sorry too, I reacted badly," she gifts, settling onto one thigh and leaning her forehead against his temple. He doesn't say anything, partly because he knows not to press blame and partly because he's watching her. She presses her lips to his temple firmly, then asks, "What song was that? I've never heard it."

He looks confused for a moment before he realizes that she's referring to the one he was singing earlier, when she was getting her morning coffee.

"The A Team, Ed Sheeran," he says simply, still watching her as he adds, "It reminds me of you sometimes,"

She raises an eyebrow; it's an invitation for him to play it again, so he nudges her and she slides off his lap to settles, cross-legged, onto the floor. He picks up the guitar again and starts strumming. She observes the chords and how his fingers shift, and then he starts to sing. It's familiar, just the tiniest bit, because Natasha has heard it playing in stores before, but not too often, and she listens to catch the words.

"_They say, she's in the class A team…_"

She can see why it reminds him of her. She is the top of her art anyway –

"_The worst things in life come free to us,_" he sings, and she lets a small, wry small cross her lips. Then he's repeating the lines she heard in the morning and then putting away the guitar, and his hands come to grasp her own.

"You think my face is crumbling?" is the least of what she wants to say, but he cracks a smile and suddenly her words dissolve in her throat. She moves up, hugs him against her and says, "You know you didn't need to be worried." When he nods, she grants him this: "I didn't do what it looked like I had to."

She feels his chest almost deflate with relief as he holds her close, "You're an angel, Nat, even if you have enough skeletons in your closet to rival the Egyptian desert, to quote Tony,"

She chuckles softly, pulling away. He has a look in his eyes that he can't quite place, and suddenly she's hearing him say, "But this mission – I…I want something tangible, Nat, and I know you think that this is a child's sentiment, but I have to try."

Her brows furrow as he turns from her and reaches into the guitar bag and brings out a small, black, velvet pouch. He opens it and cups her palm, tipping the contents out into it. There's a flash of silver and a chain and then a small hoop and he's looking at her, she's staring at it but not quite believing it, and trying to think, and his warm voice is going, "I don't want to force you into anything at all, I _can't_ for you into anything, but I want to be yours and I want you to be mine, okay? It's just – I want to know. And I want you to know I trust you, so I'm asking you to – to marry me, not the most eloquent thing I know but even if you don't want to accept, just keep this. It's the closest to a real heart I can give you."

There's a pause, the most awful pause in Clint's life; the most intense on of hers. There's a million words fluttering through her, bypassing her lips and going back to her brain. When she decides that she wants to say yes, she says, "Do that again. That was terrible."

He looks at her, and she looks disgruntled but there's also a teasing glint in her eyes.

"Will you be my partner for life?" he says simply, because there's no need for allusions to the past (recent or not), no need for declarations of how much he loves her. It's so much more than love, he can't place it; she's right, love is for children, sick teenage children who say they love each other a month into a relationship, innocent children who do know the purest kind of love, children who live inside their adult bodies and are coaxed out with alcohol and by The Right One, whatever, Clint is losing this train of thought and he has no GPS.

"Yes," she murmurs, pushing her doubt aside and taking the one true leap of faith she's ever taken in her whole life (because every other leap was calculated. In the missions, at least). She closes her hand around the ring and the chain.

"Yes, of course I'll be your partner for life."

He's holding her suddenly, they don't know who moves first, like that time in Budapest when they're staring at each other and then they're falling in more ways than one. He's holding her tight and she folds her arms right back around him and holds on, desperate in her knowledge that he won't let go, won't let her leap or fall alone, never has stopped having her back since he put his bow and arrow down and gave her his hand instead.

It always has been this ending; there is no other one. Natasha is not surprised by it. She was scared at the prospect of it once, she used it once to get him back, she's been dishonest with others and with herself but never with him. She's been dishonest in words and in actions but never in the gazes she shares with him, he strips her bare and sees it all. The thought of it should terrify her, but she's being honest today and facing her fears. She's a child growing to know that courage and strength come from standing up and embracing what scares you, that love is the strongest thing in the world if it's done right. She's coming to see that they can do this right; that it's too cold outside for angels to fly, but that they give each other wings.


End file.
